MY MENTION OF THE HENRY REED BOOKS led to various requests for kids’ book recommendations. That’s really my mother’s turf — she’s a children’s librarian — but the InstaDaughter is a big fan of Cornelia Funke’s books Inkheart and Inkspell, though I haven’t read those. She liked The Thief Lord, too, though I read it and found it okay but not great.

For oldies-but-goodies of the Henry Reed variety, of course, there are also the recently reissued Mad Scientists’ Club books by Bertrand Brinley. The InstaDaughter read the first one but was lukewarm — unlike Henry Reed’s stuff, she saw it as a “boy book.” And it pretty much is, I guess.